So the cat is out of the bag and you all now know this is the last month for certain blogs here at WBEZ. I’ll go into the specifics of my situation later, in my last blog, but in the meantime, I wanted to continue doing updates on some of the stories I’ve been covering for the last three years.

Edward Snowden didn’t vote for Barack Obama but he trusted—or, perhaps, ironically, had enough hope—in his candidacy that he waited until after the 2008 elections to make the decision to unveil the extent of the National Security Agency’s domestic surveillance program.

You could say Snowden hoped candidate Obama—so publicly against the Iraq War, so dubious about domestic spying and other programs, so happy to be viewed as a reformer—might actually undo some of the harm, and potential harm, established by the post 9/11 terrorism cure-all known as the Patriot Act.

Candidate Obama was, after all, the constitutional lawyer who understood the limits of government, the Illinois State Representative who asserted “it means something to be a citizen," the U.S. Senator who described some of the specific provisions that have allowed PRISM as “way aboard.”

The failure of the Illinois state legislature to pass the marriage equality bill has certain folks suggesting payback for those elected officials at, of all misguided and silly things, the annual Pride Parade coming up June 30. There’s even a petition over at Change.org asking that politicians be denied entry into the parade. It’s already garnered more than 1,800 signatures.

But as Tracey Baim very reasonably explains in a current editorial in Windy City Times, it’s a questionable tactic. For starters, the only two state reps who are registered to participate are Greg Harris and Sarah Feigenholtz. Denying them would actually be denying ourselves.

* On Wednesday I wrote about potential challengers to Mayor Rahm Emanuel and listed Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle as a significant challenger and Rep. Luis Gutierrez as capable of mounting a passionate campaign. A lot of people asked about Cook County Sheriff Tom Dart. I like Dart, but Dart doesn’t have a natural constituency. He may have credibility but he doesn’t have the deep roots or ethnic/racial identification of the other candidates. I say if it’s Emanuel and Dart, Rahm slaughters him.

It was just last week, right after the final announcement of the 50 CPS closings that protesters lined the sidewalks outside the meeting and chanted, “Hey hey, ho ho, Rahm Emanuel’s got to go!”

It may have looked like a turning point—citizens actually expressing their rage at the mayor—but a quick peek inside the proceedings would have revealed a different kind of evidence. Aldermen, especially African-American aldermen in whose wards Emanuel’s closings will have a disproportionate and deleterious effect, meekly sought to save this or that school, bowing before the mayor’s ferocious power.

Is there any chance, really, that Emanuel will go? He doesn’t have the charm of a Harold Washington, or the common touch of a Richard Daley, but he has a war chest of about half a million right now, and a unparalleled track record for fundraising for himself and others.

The deal would have meant two years of house arrest, one year of probation and a conviction of child abuse (rather than be required to register as a sex offender for life). It would have, in effect, kept Hunt from going to college and likely ended any chance she could ever have a career involving minors, including her choice of nursing. In other words: Hunt would have been stigmatized for life.

Sometimes, there are reminders. Indications that, yes, the arch of justice bends... and sometimes breaks. Here we are, poised maybe before the queer equivalent of the Dred Scott decision at the Supreme Court (if anybody was listening to Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg at the University of Chicago law school a few weeks back, you know the court’s rulings on DOMA/Prop 8 are not going to be Brown) and hate—individual, societal, institutional—can still rear its gnarly head and wreck a life or two or three.

Consider:

*Earlier this month, a Texas judge enforced a so-called "morality clause" in the divorce decree between Carolyn Compton and her ex-husband, effectively destroying her current same-sex relationship. How’s that?

Leave it to Barack Obama to bring together in genuine outrage Tea Party conservatives, sparked to life by his election and determined to undermine it, and the American press, technically unfettered but the administration’s best friend in times of crisis.

Sure, Obama can say his people really had nothing to do with the IRS scandal unfolding before us, in which the tax agency harassed Tea Party groups seeking not-for-profit status for their work. It’s true that the IRS is semi-independent. But does anyone believe Obama really found out about the mess from the media?

Obama is already perceived, even by many of his supporters, as aloof and above it all. Is he now saying he’s so beyond his own administration, so disconnected from his own aides, no one thought to tip him off a scandal was brewing?